article on mass media communication reference

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We don’t know that what we’re saying is particularly significant,but it is at least true.

—Robert K. Merton (1957,describing mass communication research)

O ver the past 50 years, a number of authors have attempted toreview the literature or offer conceptual schemes for classifying

media effects (Hovland, 1954; McLeod & Reeves, 1980; Roberts &Maccoby, 1985; Weiss, 1969). Lazarsfeld (1948a) summarized theproblem well:

This dearth of substantial results is due to the difficulties of the field,which become apparent as one realizes what a complexity of prob-lems the simple term effect produces. Mass media can affect knowl-edge, attitudes, opinions and behavior of individuals. These effectscan be immediate or delayed, of short duration or long-lasting.Effects upon individuals might slowly become transformed into insti-tutional changes. They can come about in simple reactions or com-plicated chains as when institutional changes produced by the mediain turn affect individuals. (p. 249)

9TWENTIETH-CENTURYMEDIA EFFECTS RESEARCH

� Daniel G. McDonald

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♦♦ The Pioneer Phase

Early in the 20th century, the field of socialpsychology was emerging at the crossroadsbetween sociology and psychology. A smallnumber of researchers and theorists beganto explore such ideas as the psychology ofbeing a member of a social group, groupdynamics, and the impacts of the psychol-ogy of individuals on the organization. Theera was also an important one in develop-ment of the mass media, for it saw the emer-gence of motion pictures, radio, and thetelephone as mass communication devices.A few pioneering psychologists, sociologists,and social psychologists wrote about theimpact that the new media were having onaudiences and on society. Their writings andresearch set the groundwork for much ofhow we conceptualize media effects today.

Charles Horton Cooley, one of the firstsocial psychologists, was one such theorist.In his extraordinary work, especiallyHuman Nature and the Social Order(Cooley, 1902) and Social Organization(Cooley, 1909), Cooley set for himself thetask of explaining the role of communica-tion in society. First and foremost, Cooleysaw the new communication media asproviding an expansion of what has goneon before. For Cooley, the new media hadcertain defining characteristics, and those

characteristics should indicate the types ofeffects we can expect.

Cooley suggests that the new media seemto be most clearly making gains over tradi-tional communication in terms of speed oftransmission and diffusion through thesocial classes. He noted two opposingstrains as the result. On one hand, themedia will encourage individuality by offer-ing ideas that are congenial to a person’sself-interest. On the other hand, the newmedia break down limits to the spread ofideas and customs, leading to a universalassimilation and sameness. Thus, Cooleysees the media as fostering individuality andconformity at the same time. The solutionto this paradox, Cooley says, is that thereare two types of individuality—one of iso-lation, the other of choice. The mediashould reduce the former but encourage thelatter (Cooley, 1909, p. 93).

For Cooley, the new media have the sametype of effects as interpersonal communica-tion—and there is little to distinguish mediafrom interpersonal communication. Startingfrom the premise that communication is thatcharacteristic that makes us most human,Cooley deduces that what must happen, overtime, is a gradual weakening of those thingsthat separate us as individuals, communities,races, and nations as we come to understandthat those who look, dress, or act differentlyare still very similar to us.

Along with variations in the conceptualization of the nature of whatwe mean by effects, studies of media effects may variously consider themere existence of the media or a particular medium (Centerwall, 1989;McLuhan, 1964; Meyrowitz, 1985), the special characteristics of themedia or a medium (McClure & Patterson, 1974; Munsterberg, 1916),the content of media or a medium (Gerbner & Gross, 1976), or a spe-cific factor within certain forms of communication (McLeod, 1995). Allof these conceptualizations, as well as many others, have been describedas the causal agent in media effects studies. In addition, the notion ofcausality itself has undergone multiple changes in social scientific phi-losophy (Owens, 1992; Salmon, 1989). With these limitations in mind,this chapter will provide a brief historical overview of U.S. media effectsresearch in the 20th century.

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The negative media effects that Cooleyforesees include the necessity of a publicwith a rather superficial understanding andconcern for issues and other people. Thissuperficiality is brought about by the factthat we learn so much about so many dif-ferent things that we do not have time tothink about, or understand, much of any-thing in detail. Because our time and atten-tion are limited, he reasons, the addition ofnew issues to learn about or understandwill decrease the amount of time and atten-tion previously spent on fewer issues.

About the same time, Hugo Munsterberg,a psychologist at Harvard University, wasthinking about effects that might be attrib-utable to displacing real-world interactionby interaction with the symbolic worldof motion pictures. Munsterberg wroteThe Photoplay: A Psychological Study(Munsterberg, 1916), in which he combinedthe physiological aspects of perceiving depthand movement with the psychologicalcharacteristics of attention, memory, andimagination to examine what happens whensomeone views silent motion pictures.1 Thiseffect is based on the idea that the mediaprovide an interaction with symbols or signsrather than with the objects or people thosesigns or symbols represent. Munsterbergmakes the point that, for us to perceive con-tinuous motion and depth2 from the seriesof static images in a motion picture, ourbrain must integrate the information andproduce a whole perception.

Munsterberg (1916) draws parallelsbetween what motion pictures do and whatour minds do as we make sense of reality.Just as our minds mold the objective worldto our own interests through attention,imagination, and emotions, so too ourminds bring together the details of themotion picture to form a coherent story.Motion picture techniques, such as flash-backs and cutaways serve to simulate mem-ory, imagination, and attention processes.

For Munsterberg, then, mediated commu-nication has its impact by presenting materialthat our mind must accept as real or true sothat we can understand the communication.

The impacts arise from the manipulation ofthis symbolic reality and confusion of ourperception of what is real with our knowl-edge that the presentation is completely sym-bolic. For Munsterberg, this confusion ofreality and content is a necessary conditionfor understanding communication and a cru-cial part of how mediated communicationworks.

Other early researchers in this timeperiod were similarly concerned about theeffects of motion pictures but primarilyconcentrated on the effects on children(Bartholomew, 1913; Edwards, 1915;Phelan, 1919). A number of social workersand sociologists of the time were concernedabout various aspects of the modern city,such as education, recreation, and leisure(Edwards, 1915; Gulick, 1909; Jones,1922). Growing delinquency, increases inpregnancy rates, and other issues focusedresearchers’ attention on potential causesand socialization influences, such as themotion picture and its theaters (Edwards,1915; Gulick, 1909; Phelan, 1919).

Even in these early days of media effectsstudy, direct media effects were typicallyconceived of as learning effects; other effectswere a consequence of what was learned(Edwards, 1915; Phelan, 1919; Wilcox,1900). Typically, that secondary effect wasthought to be a negative effect (e.g., preco-cious involvement with the opposite sex,delinquency, learning about things that were“adult” in nature), although the idea thatmovie content could have a positive effect(morally uplifting or educational) was notlost on these researchers.

By assuming that content led to an effect,researchers were able to bypass the difficultprocess of relating content to effect and sospent much of their effort documenting thefrequency of attendance, social aspects ofattendance, and parental perceptions ofmotion picture effects. By the 1920s, therewas a solid mass of evidence indicating thatmillions of children were attending motionpictures frequently—typically more thanonce per week—but, from a scientificstandpoint, little could be concluded about



the effects of motion pictures on thosechildren beyond learning.

♦♦ The Payne Fund Studies

In 1928, to address the situation more com-pletely, the Motion Picture ResearchCouncil set out to determine what effectmotion pictures had on children. It did so byobtaining a grant from the Payne Fund, anorganization with a history of interest inchildren and media. The grant was used tosupport the efforts of the Committee onEducational Research of the Payne Fund.Some of the best-known social scientists ofthe day were represented on the committee,and they devised a series of studies to inves-tigate various aspects of potential effects ofmotion pictures on children. The results ofthat series of studies were completed by1933 and reflected the state of knowledgeregarding the effects of mass communica-tion one third of the way through the 20thcentury.

Most of the Payne Fund researchers tooka very practical stance, simply trying todocument the effects of a medium that had,within about 30 years, become a majorindustry in the United States and around theworld. The Payne Fund studies found thatchildren and adults do learn from motionpictures. They could often remember whatthey learned for a long time afterward(weeks or months later) and that what theylearned produced emotional responses. ThePayne Fund studies documented manyeffects that would be restudied in researchon radio or television decades later, includ-ing such phenomena as “sleeper effects,”miscomprehension, imitation of positiveand negative media role models, develop-mental differences in understanding andlearning, and certain aspects of “perceivedreality” research, such as the confusion offacts about motion picture reality for thereal world.

After demonstrating that high levels ofmovie attendance were associated with

declining morals, delinquent behavior,lower intelligence, and a number of otherfactors, the researchers faced a question:Does extreme movie attendance lead toconduct that harms reputation, or dochildren of low reputation go frequently tothe movies (Charters, 1933)?

The authors of the studies were unable toanswer the question after they raised it.Their conclusion is that there is no simplecause-and-effect relationship. They pointtoward the idea that all of their data supportthe notion of a reciprocal relationship—movies do have an effect on children, butthose children who are most attracted tothe worst movies tend to be those with themost problems to begin with. In phrasingthat would echo throughout the later his-tory of media effects research, two of theresearchers noted that motion picture influ-ence is specific for a given child and a givenmovie and that the same picture may influ-ence different children in opposite direc-tions (Shuttleworth & May, 1933).

The primary contribution of the PayneFund studies was to document, as had notbeen done adequately earlier, that childrenand adults do learn from media and thatwhat they learn has an impact on how theylive their lives. Although the researcherswere not able to specify exactly who wouldlearn what or how learning affects behav-ior, it was clear that a simple process wasnot a viable explanation.

THE RADIO ERA

By the time the Payne Fund studies werepublished, a new medium was garneringresearch attention. Network radio hadbegun in 1927 and, by 1935, had millionsof listeners each evening. Unlike the motionpicture audience, for which attendancefigures could be calculated directly fromsales, the radio audience was invisible.Ratings services had been developed to esti-mate the size of the audience for particularprograms to enable advertisers to get asense of who was listening (Beville, 1985).



In 1933, President Hoover’s commission onsocial trends compiled a two-volume setof studies devoted to understanding mod-ern life. Recent Social Trends included onechapter devoted to the impact of radio,listing more than 100 effects of radio—asdetermined by the study’s authors—onAmerican society (President’s ResearchCommittee, 1933).

In 1935, Hadley Cantril and GordonAllport published The Psychology ofRadio, an attempt to clarify some of thedescriptions of effects appearing in RecentSocial Trends and take stock of what wasknown about radio, as well as what kindsof effects we might anticipate throughradio. The authors noted that the medium’sblending of interpersonal and impersonalcharacteristics should produce uniquesocial effects. In their final chapter, Cantriland Allport describe the comparison of thedegree of social participation afforded byradio and other forms of communication.

Given the thoughtful and careful natureof The Psychology of Radio, it is a bit ironicthat Cantril is now better known for hisstudy of an event that occurred in 1938, onthe eve of World War II, when it becameclear that the media were capable of achiev-ing massive, dramatic effects.

Theater director Orson Welles was host-ing a 1-hour weekly radio program inwhich works of literature were adoptedfor broadcast. For their Halloween broad-cast, Welles and his writers had adaptedH. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds,a science fiction story of an invasion byMartians. Because of a number of difficultiesin working the original story (set in England)into a 1-hour U.S. radio broadcast, the set-ting was changed to New Jersey, and a some-what unusual device was used to enabletransitions between places and to speed upaction: Much of the story, especially theopening, was told through radio news bul-letins “interrupting” typical radio content.

Although the broadcast worked well formost of the audience, a small percentage oflisteners that night had changed stations tothe War of the Worlds from a more popular

show a few minutes after the programstarted. As a result, they missed the openingannouncements and thought they were lis-tening to dance music—which was sud-denly interrupted by news bulletins. Inwhat was to become a dramatic demonstra-tion of the power of radio to achieve effects,panic was induced among thousands ofAmericans. The actual extent of the panicwill never be known, although some esti-mates run as high as 6 million who mayhave believed the Martians were invadingthe Earth. Cantril and a number of otherresearchers attempted to understand whathad caused the panic (Cantril, Gaudet, &Herzog, 1940).

Cantril and his coauthors attempt todescribe the individual characteristics thatwere associated with panicking or not pan-icking (Cantril et al., 1940). In other words,probably for the first time, researchers triedto sketch out the types of people and thetypes of conditions that might lead to suchpanic reactions. These conditions includedsuch characteristics as suggestibility, criticalability, and fatalism. Such a conceptualiza-tion of media effects focused attention pri-marily on the psychological, rather thansociological, aspects. As the United Statesentered World War II, such psychologicalaspects dominated social science concernsas they worked to counteract the effects, orpresumed effects, of enemy propaganda(Davison, 1983).

WORLD WAR IIAND COMMUNICATIONEFFECTS RESEARCH

The War of the Worlds phenomenonmust have been in the minds of communica-tion researchers as they assessed mass com-munication’s role in the world war. In thecase of propaganda, whether encouragingpatriotism among one’s own troops orhatred for the enemy, the effect was achievedprimarily through emotional responses—fear, hatred, pride, love, and other affectiveresponses to communication.



In some ways, those same feelings andemotions that had been roused by the “inva-sion from Mars” needed to be harnessedand used against an earthly enemy. It wasclear that, under certain conditions, the mediacould achieve very powerful effects. Thetask of these researchers was to determinewhat those conditions were. Researchers wereasked to determine how to construct themost effective propaganda material. Theirattempts to determine the “magic bullets”of effectiveness are documented in TheAmerican Soldier (Stouffer, Lumsdaine,et al., 1949; Stouffer, Suchman, DeVinney,Star, & Williams, 1949) and Experiments inMass Communication (Hovland, Lumsdaine,& Sheffield, 1949).

Although decidedly influenced by theWar of the Worlds, Hovland and his col-leagues clearly had a different researchinterest than did Cantril. Cantril was inves-tigating the mechanisms associated with themultiple effects and different interpreta-tions of one radio program, whereasHovland et al. (1949) were attempting touncover general principles related to theconstruction of messages (Lumsdaine,1984).

For Hovland and his colleagues, theaudience provided the measure of success ofa persuasive argument. Hovland et al.’s(1949) use of controlled field experimentsfor gauging the effects of media programson soldiers’ knowledge, opinions, and atti-tudes set the parameters for investigationsof mass and interpersonal persuasion forseveral decades. Hovland and his colleaguespursued such issues as differences in thechannels of communication (e.g., lecture,documentary films, etc.) and were inter-ested in being able to generalize effectsacross media—to motion pictures, radio,and newspapers (Lumsdaine, 1984).

Following World War II, it becameapparent that there were not any easyanswers or magic bullets that could be usedin persuasive communication. After the war,Hovland directed the Yale University pro-gram on attitude change research, whichbrought the field study and experimental

work they produced to major prominenceas methods of studying the social psychol-ogy of communication and attitude change(Himmelfarb & Eagly, 1974; Lumsdaine,1984; McGuire, 1996; Rosnow &Robinson, 1967). The Hovland group(Hovland, 1954, 1957; Hovland, Janis, &Kelley, 1953; Hovland et al., 1949)advanced the study of one-sided versus two-sided arguments and source credibility,among other areas.

Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues atColumbia University had begun a programof research on the role of mass communica-tion in modern society in the late 1930s(Katz, 1987; Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955;Lazarsfeld, 1940, 1946; Lazarsfeld,Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944). After severalpublications related to the use and effects ofradio, their interest broadened to the role ofmass media in general and included news-papers, books, radio, and motion pictures.Several volumes of a journal, RadioResearch (later Communications Research),were published, documenting their studies.In addition, Lazarsfeld focused heavily onthe role of media in personal decision mak-ing. Their work dealing with the role of themedia in political contexts is still heavilycited today.

Lazarsfeld’s methods (primarily surveyresearch) were very different from those ofHovland and his colleagues, and his con-clusions were also very different. Hovland’sresearch investigated the factors responsiblefor attitude or opinion change and so oftenpitted one version or one technique againstanother, whereas Lazarsfeld’s work was setin the real world of elections, fashion andstyle, and one person’s influence on another.

Lazarsfeld and his colleagues found thatmass media were not often associated withsimple directional change in attitude oropinion but were apparently often associ-ated with a reinforcing effect (Katz, 1987).In a sense, the findings parallel those of thePayne Fund and other studies of media vio-lence and behavior—that those predisposedtoward violent behavior were most likely toconsume violent motion picture content.



However, in the case of studies of violentcontent, the finding was generally consid-ered an indicator of either a powerful mediaeffect or evidence of reciprocal causation. Inthe case of political content, in which thesearch was for sources of attitude change,the same type of finding was interpreted aseither no effect or reinforcement.

The difference in interpretation of the twosimilar findings might be explained throughexamining the connotations associated withthe studies. On one hand, in studies of mediaviolence, there is a strong negative sanctionagainst the dependent variable, and any con-tributory increases in violent behavior areconsidered negative factors. On the otherhand, political attitudes, whether based intypically Republican or Democratic Partyideals, are both equally acceptable and valid,so the only effect of consequence is a conver-sion from undecided to a decision or the veryrare occurrence of a complete reversal froma Republican to Democratic affiliation.

A new form of communication effectsresearch was begun in the 1950s as socialpsychologists interested in communicationas an aspect of interpersonal interactionwere developing theories of how communi-cation works. Ted Newcomb’s idea ofco-orientation (Newcomb, 1953, 1961)focused on one person’s orientation towardanother person and how communicationserves to increase the accuracy of our per-ceptions. Drawing on ideas from Charles H.Cooley (1902, 1909), Kurt Lewin (1951),George H. Mead (1982), Talcott Parsons(1953), and Fritz Heider (1958), Newcombdeveloped a model of co-orientation thatwas to have a major influence on the field ofcommunication a decade later and that con-tinued to exert an influence on the fieldthroughout the rest of the 20th century andinto the 21st century (Carter, 1965; Kenny& Acitelli, 2001; McLeod & Chaffee, 1973;Shin & Cameron, 2003).

Newcomb’s idea of co-orientation wasabstract and, although easily lending itself tomost communication situations, the practicalapplication of the principles and approachhe developed were unclear. In addition,

Newcomb suggested that orientations,which were similar to attitudes, wereinferred from behavior (Newcomb, 1961,p. 5), contradicting the then-current ideathat behavior followed attitudes. Throughthe 1950s and 1960s, however, a numberof mass communication researchers usedNewcomb’s notion of co-orientation andother similar models in which perceptionsof others played a major role in explainingcommunication behavior and effects ofcommunication (de Sola Pool & Shulman,1959; Eisenberg, Monge, & Farace, 1984;Suzuki, 1997; White, 1950).

FRAGMENTATION, CONFUSION,AND DEEPER QUESTIONS

Reconciling the different ideas, approaches,methods, and findings became a major pre-occupation of the late 1950s and early1960s. The establishment of Ph.D.s in com-munication led to many more studies ofmedia effects during the 1950s. Publi-cation of Wilbur Schramm’s The Processand Effects of Mass Communication in1954 highlighted a number of these differ-ent approaches to media effects.

Schramm’s (1954) reader providedcommunication students with researchsummaries and articles by sociologists, psy-chologists, anthropologists, historians, anda host of other researchers and theorists.That volume and later editions serve asexemplars of Schramm’s idea that commu-nication is “one of the great crossroadswhere many pass but few tarry” (Schramm,Riesman, & Bauer, 1959, p. 8), but thecollections also highlight how differentapproaches yielded different answers, howlittle was known about the conditionsunder which media had effects, or evenabout the process of communication itself.

Amid these concerns, in 1959, BernardBerelson pronounced the field of communi-cation research as withering away, notingthat “the innovators have left or are leavingthe field, and no ideas of comparable scopeand generating power are emerging” (p. 4).



Schramm et al. (1959) responded toBerelson’s contention with a range ofexamples and explanations for whatBerelson was observing, but it was clear,even in their comments, that the state ofcommunication research was undergoing atransition period in which research wouldbe different.

Other writers also noted the sea changein communication research. Joseph Klapper’s(1960) book, The Effects of Mass Commu-nication, described a shift from “hypoder-mic effect” models of media effects to whathe termed “phenomenistic” models—thosethat saw the media as influences within atotal situation. W. Philips Davison (1959)suggested that the audience was not a passiverecipient of communication but an active,selective partner in the process. RaymondBauer’s “obstinate audience” (Bauer, 1964,1965; Bauer & Bauer, 1960; Zimmerman &Bauer, 1956) suggested that a transactionalmodel of give-and-take between audienceand communicator is needed to understandcommunication effects.

♦♦ Growth in the Discipline,Fragmentation in Direction

By the mid-1960s, media effects researchwas firmly established within various depart-ments and schools of journalism andcommunication. Partly because these schoolswere organized in accord with industry divi-sions (e.g., advertising, public relations, jour-nalism, organizational communication, etc.),media effects research was similarly frag-mented into contexts rather than process.Thus, by that time, effects associated withmedia were being studied as aspects of jour-nalism, advertising, broadcasting, or what-ever department or specialty area in whichthe researcher was teaching. Even as main-stream psychology and sociology took lessinterest in studying specific mass mediaeffects, the new field of communicationresearch continued to borrow broad theoriesand hypotheses from those fields as expla-nations for communication effects.

In the late 1960s, cognitive psychologybegan to provide raw material for advancesin mass communication effects research.Armed with such concepts as salience andpertinence, media effects research began toabandon the question of whether mediahad effects to attempt to specify the mecha-nisms by which those effects were achieved.Across the field of communication research,it became clear, as Chaffee (1977) observed,that media effects often occurred within ourminds and were not directly observable;more varied and inventive methods wereneeded to understand the processes bywhich media have effects.

RESEARCH ON VIOLENTCONTENT AND BEHAVIOR

Increasing crime rates, racial unrest, andgenerational tension of the 1960s led to adiversion of both researcher attention andgrant money from the U.S. government toattempt to understand the causes of violentbehavior. During the late 1960s and early1970s, hundreds of studies investigated thelink between media content and violentbehavior. A group of studies by social psy-chologist Albert Bandura are among thebest known of these.

Bandura’s social learning theory formedthe theoretical base for his (and manyother) studies. Bandura (1977) advancedthe discussion of media effects by specifyingconditions under which he would expectpeople (especially children) to imitate anti-social and prosocial behaviors presented inthe media. In social learning theory, thosebehaviors that are shown performed byattractive people or those behaviors that areshown to be rewarded are more likely to beimitated. Results of these studies were over-whelmingly consistent. Although some ofthese same principles were described insome of the Payne Fund studies of the1930s (Charters, 1933) and even earlier(e.g., Phelan, 1919), Bandura’s importantcontribution was to make these conditionsexplicit and test them in an experimentalsetting.



The success of social learning theory inexplaining children’s imitation of media rolemodels led to additional investigations ofhow and when children imitate media char-acters. Long-term studies (e.g., Huesmann &Eron, 1986) found additional confirmationof an association of media violence withlater aggressive and criminal behavior. Thepsychological notion of “priming” heldimportance for Berkowitz and his colleagues(Berkowitz & Geen, 1966; Berkowitz &Rawlings, 1963). They demonstrated thatwatching a film containing violent behavior,such as a fistfight, might arouse a set ofresponses that are associated in the viewer’smind with fighting. If the viewing is fol-lowed fairly quickly by a real event that isalso associated with the same set ofresponses as those associated with fighting,the content can “prime” that second set ofresponses so that it may become more likelythat the viewer will respond with a behaviorassociated with the fistfight.

The preponderance of the evidencepointed fairly quickly to the potential oftelevision to contribute to violent behavior,yet not one of the studies could conclusivelyshow that TV or movies caused violentbehavior. Researchers could show that,within a laboratory setting, providingchildren or adults with violent content andthe means to take violent action couldresult in violent behavior. In the generalpopulation, through survey and other stud-ies, researchers could show that childrenand adults who were violent also tended towatch violent media content. Linking thetwo in a causal chain became a frustratingand difficult process.

The lack of clear demonstration of causalconnections did not go unnoticed. Early on,Feschbach (1956) had advanced the cathar-sis hypothesis, which suggested that violenttelevision viewing could be a means of reduc-ing frustration and tension, similar to theeffects the ancient Greeks believed to occurfrom attending dramatic theater. Althoughthe catharsis hypothesis received some-what mixed support and continues to live insome current approaches to mood manage-ment (e.g., Bryant & Zillmann, 1994), some

researchers, such as Sparks (2002), suggestthat the evidence supporting the catharsiseffect was primarily a result of problems inthe method of investigation rather than evi-dence for the effect.

By the 1980s, television network execu-tives were frustrated by a large number ofstudies (done with less than scientific accu-racy) that blamed television for a range ofviolent behavior and attitudes. Centerwall(1989), for example, estimated that a largeproportion of U.S. homicides were a directresult of television. A panel of academicresearchers was commissioned by NBC toinvestigate the problem in detail, using animpressive data collection effort andadvanced statistical procedures (Milavsky,Kessler, Stipp, & Ruben, 1982). The panelof researchers found little to connect televi-sion as a causal factor in later violent behav-ior. Most academic researchers, though,continued to believe that the evidence,although not completely clear, is strongenough to implicate media violence as acontributory condition. Such a conclusionwas reached tentatively in the 1972 SurgeonGeneral’s Report (Comstock & Rubinstein,1972), and more forcefully in the updatesponsored by the National Institute forMental Health (Pearl, Bouthilet, & Lazar,1982). In addition, meta-analytic reviews ofthe media-violence connection during thelate 1980s and 1990s provided additionalclues to the nature of the relationships andthe boundary conditions operating in theconnection between content and behavior.

♦♦ Beyond Behavior:Construction ofa Social Reality

Although the question of media as anantecedent or cause of violent behaviorremained a popular one, the notion of cog-nitive effects and affective reactions tomedia were to dominate the last 25 years ofmedia effects research in the 20th century.Among the highest profile and most



researched areas was cultivation theory,developed by Gerbner and his colleagues(Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Gerbner, Gross,Signorelli, & Morgan, 1979) suggestingthat television “cultivates” an outlookabout social reality in the country. Theyhypothesize that the more one uses televi-sion, the more he or she will accept the “TVworld” as reflective of reality.

Cultivation theory generated strongdebate and numerous studies throughoutthe late 1970s and 1980s and remained anactive area of research in the 1990s. Testsof the theory became complex and diffi-cult, and modifications to the theory weredeveloped as evidence became difficult tosort out (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, &Signorelli, 1981). Results and conclusionshave been criticized on both conceptualand methodological grounds (Doob &MacDonald, 1979; Hawkins & Pingree,1982; Hirsch, 1981), and a recent meta-analysis by Morgan and Shanahan (1997)found no statistically significant cultivationeffect.

♦♦ Media Effectsand Social Issues

The early 1970s saw the emergence of sev-eral major strands of research associatedwith social issues and political knowledge.Although media effects had been an area ofattraction for political science since the timeof Lasswell (1948) and before (Wilcox,1900), researchers in the field typically tookideas from political science and tested themas media effects. In the early 1970s, thefield of communication began to develop anumber of ideas about the way issues andknowledge about issues were communi-cated through the media that were to havea major impact on the field and allied areassuch as political science.

One of these research areas, the knowl-edge gap hypothesis, developed by Tichenor,Donohue, and Olien (1970), suggested that,

as information diffuses into a social system,certain segments of the population learn theinformation faster than other segments.The result of the differential rate of learningis that gaps between social groups increase,rather than decrease, over time and withmore information. The knowledge gaphypothesis became the focus of hundreds ofstudies from the 1970s through the close ofthe century. At first content with replicationof the initial findings, later studies began todescribe contingent conditions and ante-cedents of the basic effect (Gaziano, 1985).Although the knowledge gap remained anarea of study throughout the century,research in the area peaked in the mid-1980s as more and more communicationresearchers tended toward psychological,rather than sociological, models forresearch.

Another area of study during the 1970sand 1980s was stimulated by changingnews media. In the 1960s, for the first time,television news had overtaken newspapersin survey responses to the question ascer-taining which medium people relied onmost for news about current affairs andpolitics. The announcement generated anumber of studies of “media reliance” or“media dependency” in which researchersattempted to unravel the consequences ofthis change in the social system. Althoughunder experimental conditions, someresearchers were able to show that televi-sion news was related to political cynicismand disaffection (McClure & Patterson,1974; Patterson & McClure, 1976). Theimplications drawn for the social systemwere quite broad and alarming. A numberof researchers demonstrated, through sur-vey data, that those who relied primarily onTV news for their information were not aswell informed or as trusting of politicians asthose who relied on newspapers.

A flurry of research activity generated inthe early and mid-1980s demonstrated sim-ilar results. However, because the bulk ofthe studies did not involve data that wouldenable causal inferences, some researchersquestioned the validity of the conclusions



drawn about the role of television andsuggested that the findings might as easily beattributed to the type of person who seeksnews from television rather than radio.

Studies by McLeod and McDonald(1985), Reese and Miller (1981), and anumber of others found evidence thatpeople did, indeed, learn from televisionnews. By the late 1980s, the sweeping con-clusions of the earlier research had had con-siderable doubt cast on it. In a situation thatnearly mimics exactly Lazarsfeld’s (1946)study of newspaper and radio reliance, thefield essentially concluded that Lazarsfeldwas correct in his assertion that those whoreported relying on electronic media wereless interested in the news in general thanwere those who reported relying on news-papers (Lazarsfeld, 1940, 1946, 1948b).

One area of study that was developed inthe late 1960s and early 1970s illustrates inparticular the general trend in media effectsresearch during the past quarter century.Although the idea had been suggested ear-lier (Cohen, 1963; Lippmann, 1922), theagenda-setting hypothesis was most clearlyenunciated by McCombs and Shaw (1972).The hypothesis suggested that the media setthe agenda for public discussion of socialissues by providing clues about which issueswere important to think about.

Probably as a function of the heavy influ-ence of cognitive psychology on mediaeffects research in the late 1970s, agenda-setting research was recast from a socialsystem effect; that is, the media “correlated”responses in social surveys (cf. Lasswell,1948) to an individual psychological effectin which the media were seen as manipulat-ing the salience of issues. Thus, although thetheory originally focused on public discus-sion as being affected by media coverage,tests of the theory focused on media cover-age being associated with issue salience orprioritization in people’s minds. As cogni-tive psychology had greater impacts onmedia research in the 1980s and 1990s,a number of additional ideas were addedto and complemented the agenda-settingframework (McCombs & Shaw, 1993).

Agenda setting was transformed from ahypothesis to a research area, incorporatingearlier sociological concerns such as newsdiffusion (Breed, 1960) and gatekeeping(Becker, McCombs, & McLeod, 1975;White, 1950). Attempts were also made tolink agenda setting to other theories, such asnews framing, media priming, and the spiralof silence.

Research in news framing is concernedwith how issues are presented in the news—which details are important, which are triv-ialized or peripheral. The area is based onearly observations by Gitlin (1980) andstudied by a number of researchers in com-munication and political science (Iyengar,1991; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). Theresearch suggests that, by emphasizing cer-tain aspects of issues, framing has implica-tions for understanding the ebb and flow ofpublic opinion.

Media priming effects take the notion ofpriming from cognitive psychology, whichsuggests that people can be “primed” to usecertain stored sets of knowledge in makingdecisions or evaluations simply by exposingthem to an associated stimulus (Higgins &King, 1981). Media priming is somewhatdifferent from the psychological construct ofpriming in that it suggests that people areprimed to make judgments on such things aspresidential performance through repeatedexposure to news reports on issues (Kinder,1998a). The departure from the psychologi-cal area of priming is clear in that mediapriming refers to what might be seen asassociative learning—people make connec-tions between presidents and issues, forexample, because they are taught those con-nections through news reports. Repeatedpresentations of the issues result in audiencemembers’ use of those learned links in eval-uating the president. Whereas the psycho-logical construct of priming refers to anactivation of mental connections betweenthe prime and the object of evaluation(Higgins & King, 1981), media primingrefers to the dominance of certain learnedconnections in making an evaluation(Kinder, 1998a). Although the idea of media



priming has generated a large amount ofresearch, it is a relatively new idea. Thereare conceptual issues surrounding how itworks and how it differs from other relatedmedia effects perspectives such as agendasetting or other phenomena such as salience,accessibility, activation, and the psychologi-cal concept of priming (Domke, Shah, &Wackman, 1998; Edelstein, 1993; Higgins &King, 1981; Kinder, 1998b).

♦♦ Media Effectsand Public Opinion

A second major research area to emerge inthe early 1970s and remain a fruitful avenuefor research at the close of the century wasin the area of public opinion research.Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s (1974) idea ofthe spiral of silence appeared at first toattract little attention beyond that ofmembers of her institute; however, by theearly 1980s, it had emerged as one ofthe most researched theories in the field.The spiral of silence suggested that peopletend to remain silent, rather than expressopinions, if they perceive that their opinionis losing ground among the population.Mass media effects within the theory play afairly minor but important role of providinginformation about the climate of opinion,and the perception of this climate is what isused in determining whether one’s opinionis gaining or losing ground.

Most researchers studying the spiral ofsilence pick only certain components tostudy because the theory requires fairly sub-stantial data to test completely. Although anumber of early studies called some of thebasic premises into question, empiricalstudies support various aspects of thetheory (Glynn & McLeod, 1984). A meta-analysis conducted in the late 1990s(Glynn, Hayes, & Shanahan, 1997) foundthat the overall premise had small but sta-tistically significant support. In addition, inone of the few studies testing the theoryover time, McDonald, Glynn, Kim, and

Ostman (2001) used the 1948 election datacollected by Berelson, Lazarsfeld, andMcPhee (1954) and found support consis-tent with the premises of the theory.

MEDIA USE AS EFFECT

As the first century of empirical massmedia effects research in the United Stateswas drawing to a close, research on theinternet loomed large in journals and thepopular press. A number of these studies aresimply replicating older studies done withdifferent media (see Wartella & Reeves,1985). Some of these attempt to incorporatewhat has been established about our inter-actions with media. The best of these mergethe interpersonal communication literaturewith mass media effects literature in a waythat may not be too far off from whatCooley (1902, 1909) imagined at the begin-ning of the century and also incorporatingmore of the social element that had largelybeen missing from media effects researchsince the Payne Fund studies. The worst ofthem sink to what Chaffee (1979) describedas the “synthetic competition”—a pitting ofone medium against another to determinewhich is “best.”

During the 1980s, physiological researchmethods began to be employed by anumber of researchers working on mediaeffects. Although some types of physiologi-cal measures were being used as early asthe Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, thesetypes of measures were seldom used betweenthat time and the 1980s, when the need tolook into the “black box” processes, or atleast their outward manifestations, becameincreasingly important for communicationtheory. These researchers were most con-cerned with the areas where media had directeffects: attention, thought, memory, cogni-tions, arousal, skin conductance, and heartrate. Although the relevance or importanceof the variables being studied in this typeof research may not be immediately clear,what is clear is that the effect is a result ofcommunication.



In concert with physiological studies thathark back to the early Payne Fund studies,the 1980s began to see affect and affectivereaction return as a legitimate area of studyin communication research (Dorr, 1981).Research proliferated on frighteningmass media, led largely by the work ofJoanne Cantor and her colleagues (Cantor,1994; Cantor & Sparks, 1984; Cantor &Wilson, 1984). Offshoots of this researchalso examined the role of other people inmodifying the mass media experience(Nathanson, 1999).

♦♦ New Directions

These studies, as well as others investigatinghow mass media fit into people’s lives, sug-gest that Bauer’s (1965) ideas of models ofthe transactional and interactive nature ofcommunication might be on the horizon.As the second century in mass media effectsresearch begins, there are a number of areasin which we may expect media effectsresearch to be conducted over the next fewyears. Because of their generality, twobroad areas may dominate media effectsresearch in all of its contexts: issues of com-munication and reality and further explo-ration of the black box.

Issues of communication and reality, dis-tinguishing reality from communication andother similar questions, follow from the ear-liest investigations of Munsterberg (1916)through the Payne Fund studies (Charters,1933), Cantril and Allport (1935), Gerbner’scultivation studies (Gerbner & Gross, 1976;Gerbner et al., 1979), and contemporaryissues of “presence” in virtual reality. Itis one of the most basic questions in com-munication research: What is the differ-ence between communication and reality?Although some studies frame the questionas if blurring communication and reality is aparticular problem, it is clear that blurringis the natural state of things, or else com-munication would have no relevance toreality. That is, communication is about

reality, or it is worthless. The degree to whichcommunication is isomorphic to reality is anextremely difficult question.

From one perspective, no communica-tion is real—it is all communication.In some instances, however, we expectpeople to act on communication as if theywere reacting to a reality—if someoneyells “fire,” for example. In other instances,we expect people not to treat the com-munication as reality—if someone yells“Godzilla,” for example. As the new cen-tury of media research begins, we see that itis probably not an issue of deciding whethermaterial depicted in the media is real; it ismore likely an issue of deciding whichdimensions of reality can be found in anyparticular communication. The idea of“real” may take on many visual, semantic,and meaning aspects—an affective reality(e.g., illustrating emotions that are consis-tent with the situation that is being drama-tized), a reality of general social principles(e.g., suggesting that people who live fastlives die early), or a reality of visual appeal(e.g., that’s real because it moves likea raptor should move). With computer-generated motion picture locations andcharacters, the field may find it profitableto study these and many other dimensionsinvolved in how we use, rather than evalu-ate, communication and reality.

Further Exploration of the Black Box.Understanding how audience membersunderstand reality is a subarea within thebroader area of understanding what happenswhile communicating. Our first hundredyears made a number of assumptions aboutcommunication; our models divided com-munication into various components, sug-gested stages in communication processes,described encoding and decoding of mes-sages, and so forth, but all of these modelsand theories of communication were basedon an assumption that either (a) we wouldnever know the actual processes that occuror (b) the processes could be logicallydeduced. As we move into the secondcentury of media effects research, we find



that the assumptions of (b) are inadequatefor a scientific study of media effects, andalthough (a) may be true in the strictestsense, psychological models and methodsfor studying information processing havegotten much more sophisticated and movedcloser to modeling if not the process then atleast the outcome, of thought.

♦♦ Notes

1. Commercial sound motion pictures werenot available until 1927, 11 years afterMunsterberg’s book was published. Silent filmswere commonly exhibited in small towns eventhrough the 1930s.

2. Depth is typically not thought of as beingpresent in motion pictures; Munsterberg (1916)makes a case for the perception of depth byfocusing on the difference between knowledgeand perception. Knowledge refers to our aware-ness that the screen is flat; perception refers toour acceptance that the images on the screenmove within a three-dimensional space. Whensomeone walks behind a chair in film, forexample, we do not think it odd when thisperson’s legs “disappear” because we accept theimage as having depth.

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